How do I upload an image?

Click on Add in the upper left menu bar and select Image to open the upload file page. Next, select the Browse button, click on the the image you want from your hard disk, and select Open. Fill in the blanks and click on Upload file. See the Images tutorial for more step-by-step instructions for uploading and annotating images.

What images can I upload?

The image is not copyrighted, or you have the copyright owner's permission to upload the file. Please do not violate copyright law! See below.

Typically, images on WeRelate are historical source documents (such as birth, marriage, and death certificates or marriage records) or family photographs. Images of personal items, such as a family's pocket watch passed down for generations, are acceptable as long as the image is between 100-250k. Consider posting a small thumbnail of the item and give readers a link offsite to a larger image (use Flickr or Photobucket). Remember that too many images will make the page load slowly.

Can I upload images from FamilySearch or Ancestry.com?

FamilySearch and Ancestry.com do not explicitly allow uploading images from their websites. See FamilySearch's terms and Ancestry's terms. You may be able to post a small number of significantly-reduced-resolution images or small snippets of mages under the principal of "fair use". See Help:Image licensing for more information.

What about Fold3 (formerly Footnote)?

What about other websites?

If you can identify the author of the image you should ask them for permission. Websites like FindAGrave make it easy to identify the author. If you want to upload an image of a unique historical document, you may be able to upload it under the principal of fair use as described above. Otherwise you should just link to the webpage containing the image. See Help:Image licensing for more information.

How do I include an image in a page?

What is annotation?

WeRelate software permits users to attach cyber-notes to the images they upload. For example, you can label individuals, places, and other objects in family photographs. Also, you can mark important information on digital images of source documents like birth certificates and census records. See this example of an image that has been annotated.

How do I delete an image?

What is metadata?

The fields on the image upload screen create metadata. This is computerese for indexing information attached to the page. Each field is used to index the image and thus make it easier for others to find it. You can index your image by image date, place, surnames, and copyright holder.

Image date:

This is the date shown in the image. For instance, if the original picture was made in 1910 and you scanned the image in 2005, the image date would be 1910. Including the image date indexes the image by date. This helps others find images from a particular time frame.

Place

This is the place to which the image is relevant. For example, if you are uploading a copy of the census for Pratt, Kansas, you would enter "Pratt,"--note the comma--and wait a moment. The place field accesses the place index and will shortly give you a list of all the "Pratts" in the place index. When you select the appropriate place, the image will be geocoded.

Surname

This refers to the surname(s) relevant to the image. You should include maiden, immigrant, and other surnames that are relevant but not necessarily included in the actual image. Do not use conjuctions and put each surname on a separate line. If you enter "Jones and Smithe", the system will index the image as "Jones and Smithe", and not under both "Jones" and "Smithe". If you enter Jones and Smithe on the same line, the image will be indexed under "Jones-Smithe", and not under both "Jones" and "Smithe".

Copyright holder

Enter the name of the person or company that created the material, not the person who created the copy. The government usually owns the copyright on its own documents. The photographer or his company usually owns the copyright on pictures. With older photographs, you often won't know who the copyright holder is.

What if I see an image on WeRelate that I believe violates copyright laws?

Don't worry, it is not your responsibility to police content on WeRelate. Make a note of the issue on the image's talk page. Most images on WeRelate will fall under the fair use laws. If the owner of the image does not want it used on WeRelate they can request it be removed by emailing the Copyright Infringement Review Committee. In extreme cases of contributors continuing to post copyrighted material after appropriate warnings, such users may be blocked from editing to protect the project. If you see an image that does not state the source of the image and you know the source or know where to find it - please add the information to WeRelate to help researchers in the future.

What if I am the owner of WeRelate-hosted content being used without my permission?

If you are the owner of an image that is being used on WeRelate without your permission, then you may request the image be immediately removed from WeRelate by emailing the Copyright Infringement Review Committee.

General information

Image page title

This is the title of the wiki page that will be created for the image. Every uploaded image must be given a unique page title. The page title must end with the same extension that your image ends with.

You can create a unique title by including the names of the individuals referenced in the image along with relevant dates, places, and/or document type in the title. For example, if your image filename is grandpa.jpg, then your image page title could be something like Elmer Hathaway birth certificate 18 May 1851.jpg. Another possibility is to include the full title of the person or family page including the index number in the image title. For example, Elmer Hathaway (1) birth certificate.jpg. It's up to you.

Copyrights

Generally speaking, works where creativity was used to produce the work, such as biographies and images, are copyrighted. If you want to use someone else's copyrighted work, you need to either get their permission, or use it under fair use guidelines. See Help:Image licensing for more information.